Thursday, August 11, 2016

The day you were born you looked at me with the eyes of an
old soul. I knew right then you were what I’d waited my whole life for. You
were wise from the start. I’ve always known that I have as much to learn from
you as I have to teach you. You can be a typical teen at times. Cranky, argumentative
and an emotional tornado, but you are so genuine, so kind and so unique. I am
regularly in awe of how well you know yourself and how hard you are willing to
fight not to change for me or anyone else.

But this one is tough, kiddo. Middle School. It’s not the schedule
or the shifting of classes. It is not balancing multiple teachers or harder
courses. It’s middle school kids. Are they all a special breed of gremlin that
morph by smelling out fear and insecurity? Perhaps. Will the next two years be nothing but pimples,
body odor and mean girls? No. There will be finals and term papers and rumor
mongering too. There will be crushes and heartbreak and friendships tested. There
will be moments of greatness and success that your insecurity will warn you to
celebrate quietly as to not stand out. I
say this from experience. I don’t tell you this lightly or without knowing that
I sound like I am prepping you for war, but forewarned is forearmed,
sweetheart.

Don’t be shocked by how mean girls can be. Middle School
girls are a special kind of mean. And while I hate to believe it, we’ve all
been that girl and we’ve all been the victim of that girl. Don’t let it define you
or wound you for too long. We all survived, scars and all.

You have been blessed thus far with a group of friends who
are as “perfectly weird” as you are. Social misfits, who all “fit” together. It’s why The Breakfast Club resonates so
deeply in your soul. You have been so lucky to remain outside of most of the
drama online and in person. Middle School will make that harder. But stay
weird, my love.

Your “weird” is what makes you, you. The way you write. The way
you draw. The way you wear your hear t right out on your sleeve. The way you
laugh and giggle and sing. The way you dance and draw song lyrics all over your
pants. The way you read obsessively and memorize whole books so that you can
share the best parts with us. The way you get into the minds and hearts of
characters and long to understand them as people. The way you are part girl and
part woman and 100 shades of tween. The way you rally for the causes you
believe in and do everything with a sense of passion and purpose.

As hard as it will become to remain true to whom you are, FIGHT
for it. Fight for your friends when they are faced with cruelty or hardship. Fight
for the ideals you already hold so dear. Fight to remain you while figuring out
exactly who that is. Fight the urge to “fit in,” when standing out will take
you so much further. Fight to ignore the bullies and the desire to be one when
you are hurt. Fight taking down a friend, an acquaintance or even someone you
really don’t like. There are some hurts that scar us forever. Fight against
injustice when you see it, against boredom and insecurity when you feel it and cruelty
when you hear it. And stay weird, my love.

Spend time nurturing new and old friends. Spend more time on
the subjects you hate than the ones you love. Spend time being unique when it’s
easier to be anonymous. Spend time bettering your mind and your body. Push
yourself, HARD. Never turn in anything less than your best work. Never leave a friend
alone. Never walk when you can run. Never say no because yes is more work.
Never let anyone else define you, tell you what you think, what you feel or who
you are. Never chose hate when you can chose love. Never treat anyone in a way
you’d be ashamed to admit to me.

Things will be confusing for everyone around you - popularity,
sexuality, identity and ideology. Keep your mind wide open. Let your spirit and
your heart guide. And LISTEN. Don’t just hear but really LISTEN. Listen more
when you disagree than when you agree – those times will prove to be your
greatest lessons.

Trust me when I tell you that you will learn more about
yourself and others in the next two years than you have in the last 13
combined. This is a passage out of childhood. It will be exciting, and
overwhelming and scary and wonderful and awful. Some days it will be all of
those things at once (oh blessed hormones).

So as we embark on this journey together, my love. Stay weird
and know:

My door, my ears, my heart and my lap and always
open.

There is nothing you can do that I cannot
forgive, but you have to tell me so I can help.

Girls will be mean. It will not make sense.

You will be mean. It will not make sense. Learn
from it.

Deleted and erased no longer exist. Don’t do it,
say it or show it if you’d be ashamed for it to wind up in your grandmother’s
inbox.

You have a powerful voice. Use it wisely and
with conviction.

Silence is equally as powerful when used
correctly.

You are beautiful, smart, funny, wise and
strong. You will not truly believe any of that for many years, so I will be
here to remind you.

I want you to be successful, but not as much as I
want you to be kind.

Don’t give anything less than 100%. If you can’t,
don’t bother.

I don’t expect you to be the best. I simply
expect you to try your hardest, always.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

The thing about divorce is that even the “best” ones are,
for a time - a shit storm. Your life is upside down and everything you defined
yourself as is shifting. You are watching your partner of close to 20 years move
out and then sell a house and move, all the while reminding yourself to
breathe. And reminding your kids that their world is not ending. While doing
all of that, it’s hard to not become self-involved, selfish and perhaps blind
and deaf to everything that is not immediately in front of you.

Your expectations of your people become larger than life. You
need life rafts, buoys and Atlas sized shoulders. And sometimes that’s ok. At others, it’s not. You become so wrapped up in
your own storm that you often forget that everyone’s lives are still in motion
and they too are experiencing their own hard times, their own loss, and their
own needs. You are so focused on staying afloat that your weight becomes an
anchor, keeping you in only one place, focused on only your tugboat.

Different friends and family respond in different ways and
you take that personally and make it their fault. You are hurt and angry and
full of blame when they no longer show up. But they don’t see it that way. They
have their own lives and they miss your presence in it. They need your strength
and support at a time when you don’t have it to give. Time goes on and you feel
alone and isolated from those who used to be your everything. And for a while
no one is willing to give. Fingers point in every direction but the right one. At yourself.

Eventually you are lucky enough to have it out with someone
you refused to give up on, even though you should have both thrown in the towel. Lucky
enough to have them call you out on your sh*t and remind you that it takes two
to tango. Remind you that you have always believed in owning your own sh*t, but have
been too busy feeling badly for yourself to pull up your big girl panties and
do so.

Divorce is like a death and it too has stages of grieving. In
three years I’ve passed though shock, through denial, through anger, through
bargaining and depression and testing and into acceptance. But divorce is different
too. It’s about moving through surviving and into thriving.

So that’s where I am. I am working on thriving and to do
that I must own my sh*t.

I own my failures as a wife and a mother.

I own my selfishness as a friend, a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, a lover and a girlfriend.

I own the passive aggressiveness and blame I wove through my
writing when I was hurt and felt betrayed.

I own my weight gain, lack of motivation and strength when I
could do nothing more than crawl under my covers and cry.